Words of a Father
by lucy forst
Summary: Never in his life had he thought that his father could be so right...


Disclaimer: None of the characters mentioned in this story belong to me except the baby Inu Taisho (not the one created my Rumiko Takashi) so please….don't sue me, I don't have much anyways…T_T

This one's for my dad.

**Words of a Father**

_It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was._

_Anne Sexton_

She urges me ahead. She presses her palm against my back and gives me a small push. I'm not alert. So I stumble but soon I stand straight. The small bundle in her arms looks up at me with his large golden eyes so innocently that I almost smile. I know he's wondering what is happening. I know he's afraid to see your huge remains standing in the middle of nowhere. I was afraid once too, I'm sure you remember. Then you taught me how never to fear. I took it so literally that I walked into the dragon's lair with my head held high.

You were my hero.

I would have done anything you'd have told me to do and let's face it, in the beginning you weren't perfect but then, neither was I.

Then you met _her_.

That was when my world began to fall apart. At first I could not understand why mother would rather drink than play with me, but I was too young to know the answer. Then as I grew up and I saw you with your human wife I began to think you were leaving me too. I was used to the man who would thrash me for the smallest of mistakes and seeing that man become compassionate meant to me that he had become somebody else. It was not possible for me to accept that change then, I couldn't look past the word _'human.'_

It disgusted me.

But for the world, you were still that great warrior that every young boy admires and wants to be like. I was different. I didn't want to be _like_ you. I wanted to _be_ you. Then that half-breed was born. You were off warring with Ryūkotsusei and mother killed herself in front of my very eyes. That moment changed me. I blamed you for it. I blamed you for almost everything.

Almost…

I knew that something was wrong with me, something that could not be fixed because I had almost succeeded in being you. That something was love. I had loved mother and I had loved you but the affections I felt, were never returned. Mother was always drinking and you were always off at war and when you were not, you were with that human and then when I heard the news of the birth of that half breed, I…

You cannot imagine my rage. When you talked about your unborn bastard, you did it so lovingly, like a real father and I would always look into my childhood and try to find one little memory of you showing me love. Not respect, not admiration, but love. You were my commander, my general, my teacher, my trainer, my lord, my king, my hero but you were never once my father.

You might have realized it when you met her and you tried to fix things but I was not ready to listen.

What was done could not be undone.

No wonder I spoke those words to you while you stood wounded and though wounded, you stood straight, with your chin held high, as befitting a true lord. That night I was not your understudy, not your soldier, not your trainee, not your student, not your subject, not your worshipper but your _son_ and that night for the first time you were my _father,_ and that night is remembered by me for its bitterness because it was then that you would mock me when you were being family.

I never understood the meaning of your words that night, father, but I wish I would have. I spoilt much of that half-breed, pardon me, Inuyasha's childhood. I broke him beyond the stage of being fixed but then a miracle happened, and it crawled right out of the Bone Eater's Well. That miracle was the thing that fixed Inuyasha. That miracle was the one that saved me from myself.

That miracle was Kagome.

She's standing right behind me as I kneel down here in prayer. That little bundle in her arms is our son, your grandson, Inu Taisho – named in your honor and no matter how small or weak he is right now we're already very proud of him. And you see that I'm mated to a human, a miko nonetheless, I've fathered a hanyou and one more is on it's way (I hope it's a girl this time). Now, when Naraku is gone, my brother is happy with his dead miko, and I have no more wars to fight I am here to tell you that I understand, that at the end of it, you were trying to be to me the father to me that my grand sire never was and in the same way I will be to my son, the father that you tried to be. I see how I have become you and how maybe one day my son will become me, though Kagome and I hope not.

And before I walk away from here, knowing that it will be a long time before I return, I just wanted to say something that's been on my mind for a long time,

"I miss you Dad…"

That night, as Kagome crawls into bed beside me after putting Inu to sleep (though he'll wake up in an hour or so) and puts her arm around my torso I gaze up at the distant ceiling of our room. She rests her head on my bare chest which heaves with each breath I take and when I don't respond she looks up at me and frowns. "What's the matter, Sesshou?" She asks with that adorable pout on her lips which I've never been able to resist. I smile at her. I pull her close and press our bodies together. I rest my head in the crook of her neck and take in the fresh, lemony scent that is her. Our hair soon becomes a mixture of silver and black. She sighs against me and I shiver when I feel her breath against my skin. It gives me goose-bumps. Is this what it felt like, I wonder. I grab a fistful of her jet black hair and the silky strands slip out of my pale, clawed fingers. Sometimes I just wish you were here to see this, to see us and the progress we're making. Sometimes I just wish you were here, father, to say that you missed me too…


End file.
